Spotlight on feminine India in the trailer of All we imagine as light

Payal Kapadia's first feature-length fiction film won the Grand Prix at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.

It has been thirty years since a film from India was in official competition on the Croisette. This year, however, All we imagine as lightthe first feature-length fiction film by Payal Kapadialeft the Cannes Film Festival with the Grand Prix – three years after the Indian filmmaker was awarded the Golden Eye during the 2021 edition for her documentary A whole night without knowingAt the time, she looked back on the university protests that had swept through her country during the 2010s. Without losing sight of the reflection of a fractured society, in this film she paints an intimate portrait of a feminine India.

Prabha (Kani Kurusti) and Anu (Divya Prabha) are both nurses who share a flat in Mumbai. The former has not heard from her husband for some time and has forbidden herself from having a new love affair. The latter loves a man in secret – their love is forbidden. As if to take stock of their history, these two women take advantage of a stay in a coastal village to glimpse the promise of a new freedom.

Sometimes approaching documentary, a genre mastered by the director, All we imagine as light seems to be also imbued with poetry and lightness – light to paint the portrait of these women marked by Indian society and its traditions. Prabha suggests in this trailer that she was married very young to a man she barely knew. The reception of a rice cooker from Germany where her husband would be, calls into question her assertions.

On Anu's side, young and full of love for the one she loves, it is their religious differences – he is Muslim – that prevent them from living their passion in broad daylight. Both will need to get away from the hubbub of the city to listen to the beating of their hearts.

Female emancipation is at the heart of Payal Kapadia's cinema, which convinced the editorial staff of First. As for the public, they will be able to witness this sensitivity from October 2.

Cannes 2024 – All We Imagine As Light, India in the feminine [critique]